The Knesset Vote this week to grant Israel’s Chief Rabbinate expanded authority over the Western Wall is not a technical administrative matter. It touches one of the most symbolically charged and emotionally sensitive sites in the Jewish world. For Jews in Israel and across the Diaspora, the Kotel is not simply a prayer space. It is a living symbol of shared history, longing, and peoplehood.

And yet, instead of treating this moment with the care it deserves, the issue has been cannibalized by three different camps — each advancing its own agenda, and each, in the process, disenfranchising the broader Jewish public.

For the governing coalition, the bill became another instrument in its ongoing battle with Israel’s judicial system. Rather than fostering a serious conversation about the character and governance of the Kotel, the proposal was folded into a larger constitutional struggle. The Wall became a prop in a power contest. The real, substantive questions were overshadowed by political brinkmanship: How should a national holy site be administered? How do we balance halachic integrity with national unity?

On the other side, the Reform movement quickly framed the vote as further proof of the Rabbinate’s intolerance and overreach. There are legitimate grievances and real pain within Diaspora communities, and those concerns deserve to be heard with respect. But when the conversation is reduced to a broadside against the Rabbinate as an institution, nuance disappears. The Kotel becomes a symbol in a culture war rather than a shared inheritance demanding creative, responsible stewardship.

And the Rabbinate itself has not been immune to this dynamic. Instead of consistently articulating a vision of the Wall as a sacred space belonging to the entire Jewish people, some voices presented the move as a necessary assertion of authority against non-Orthodox movements. That framing reinforces a binary of “us versus them,” turning a national treasure into a battleground for denominational supremacy.

In this triangular struggle — coalition versus courts, Reform versus Rabbinate, Rabbinate versus non-Orthodox movements—the vast majority of Jews have been left without representation. The complexity of the issue has been flattened into slogans.

The media, unfortunately, amplified this flattening. Coverage has largely echoed the most confrontational narratives: state versus judiciary, Orthodoxy versus Reform, religion versus pluralism. Almost no space has been given to Orthodox rabbis who reject these simplistic binaries. I know this firsthand. Many of my Orthodox colleagues — and I among them — believe that the Kotel should not be placed under exclusive control of the Chief Rabbinate. We say this not out of hostility to halacha, but out of deep loyalty to it and to Klal Yisrael.

There are Orthodox voices committed to halachic standards who nonetheless recognize that the Western Wall is a national symbol that must be administered with sensitivity to the entire Jewish people. We believe that preserving the sanctity of the site and acknowledging the diversity of Jewish expression are not mutually exclusive goals. But those voices rarely make headlines. They do not fit the drama-driven template.

When the press elevates only the most strident positions, it deepens the fractures it claims to document. It creates the illusion that the debate is irreconcilable, that compromise equals capitulation, and that moral seriousness belongs only to the extremes.

The Western Wall does not belong to the Rabbinate, to the coalition, or to any single movement. It belongs to the Jewish people. If we continue to weaponize it for institutional gain, we will widen the rift with Diaspora Jewry and erode trust at home.

We need less grandstanding and more responsibility. Less narrative warfare and more moral courage. The Kotel deserves leadership that speaks with nuance — leadership that understands that unity is not weakness, and that caring for Klal Yisrael sometimes means refusing to play to the loudest crowd.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)